School is scheduled to begin on August 16 and it’s now time to apply for Free and Reduced Lunch for your child. Director, Tonya Jones stopped by Castle Country Radio to let listeners know about the application process.

“Free and reduced lunch is so important that everybody fills it out because those benefits, that actually brings in where we can get aides in, we can get federal grants and different things for the community as well as for the schools. Its so important that those applications are filled out. We actually got two schools that will be going on CEP because of the high percentages of applications filled out. So we have two schools that will be on free lunch for the whole school year,” explained Jones. You can access the Free and Reduced Price School Meal Application on the Carbon School District website at https://www.carbonschools.org/

The Nutrition Program currently has employment opportunities available for individuals looking for a job with the district. “Yes, we are, we are hiring, and because we’ve added the fresh fruits and vegetables program, we actually need another person in each of the elementary kitchens to help prepare those fruits and vegetables. So we are still looking for people to be hired and we’re grateful that anybody that has or that they want to work when their kids are in school, and then be home before their kids get home, this is a great program to do that,” stated Jones. Employment application can be obtained on the Carbon School District website at https://www.carbonschools.org/

This year in the elementary schools there is a new program being rolled out called the Fresh Fruits & Vegetables Program. “What this program is, it is for, to teach the kids to try new things, and then educate them about fruits and vegetables. So what we do is we bring in twice a week, we bring in different fruits and vegetables, all the kids in the whole school get to try it. So we get lots of different things, like we have had jicama, we’ve had Dragon Fruit, we’ve had Star Fruit, just any different variety of apples, we’ve had purple carrots, we’ve had purple potatoes. You can try so many different things that we didn’t’ know existed,” said Jones. This is a great program for children to be introduced to healthy snacks outside the normal lunch period.

The high school will have an option this year that will allow for a variety of food items to be purchased for lunch.  “We’re going to try a la carte program at just the high school this year and then maybe move it to some of the other middle schools later. We want to try it and see how we’re going to do. We’re going to offer all different kinds of drinks, we’ll be bringing in the Naked drinks that are like the Berry Juice, Mango Juice, Green Machine, any of those we’ll be bringing them in. Propels, and we’ll have chips, jerky, whatever we can get a hold of that will fit the Smart Compliance that go in our schools so that the students are getting healthy snacks,” explained Jones.

Any questions or concerns please feel free to contact Carbon School District Child Nutrition at (435) 613-3133.